About the author
Shreekumar Varma is a poet, award-winning playwright,
columnist and novelist. His novel "Lament of Mohini "(Penguin Books) was published in 2000. His regular columns can be found in the New Indian Express and the Deccan Herald. He has completed a second novel Maria's Room and is working on a book on Chennai and a third novel. He can be visited at ShreeVARMA.com
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Five Drops of Gold
by
Shreekumar Varma
The man who found them was so poor that he threw them away.
His name was Achu, and he was getting so frustrated by the poor yield that he was, as usual, venting his anger upon the land. He dug and dug, and when he came upon the coins, he flung them away even as he’d thrown away so many bits of glass and discoloured bone, brittle old twigs and warm stone.
Sometimes his wife came outside to watch, and she had a few things to tell him. He heard nothing but his own ragged breath as he swung, and the thudding pain of the earth and the swishing air as the shovel swept down again and again.
They fell in an arc of neat symmetry as if he’d meant it that way.
It was she who later picked them up, five in all, and cleaned them, first she wiped them and rubbed hard with a piece of rag, then she washed them in well-water and wiped them again. When she was done, she stood and stared at them in surprise, then began to laugh out loud.
As she served him his evening meal in the light of the kerosene lamp, she told him, “You’re a strange man!” He paused, with the gruel poised to enter his mouth, and wondered what was coming. This was his only meal nowadays, and he wanted to eat in peace. The jack-fruit leaf, shaped into a conical spoon, leaked back into his plate as he waited docilely. Their daughter-in-law Ammu also waited. She was alone most of the time, since her husband preferred the company of his friends, and she made do with these casual exchanges to while away the time.
Achu began to eat when his wife didn’t elaborate. He didn’t question her, not wanting to risk a battle. After a while, she said in a chiding tone, “You keep grumbling about poverty, and when something comes your way, you simply throw it away!” Ammu pricked up her ears, and Achu looked at his wife in surprise. What was she talking about?
She further surprised them by giving in to uncharacteristic, uncontrollable laughter.
It was soon the talk of the village. Some Achu-farmer, a man they didn’t even know existed, had found treasure buried in his land. Five gold coins! What luck some people had!
It was a mixed reaction, of course. Some people were filled with admiration, others dismissed the story with jealous contempt, some said: “So what, so what?” Achu sat in his hut, a virtual prisoner, forbidden by his wife to go out and work. “Why do you have to work now?” she asked. “You’ll never learn!”
Their landowner heard of it and sent his men.
Achu’s wife refused to part with the coins. “The yeild is always ours,” she said resolutely.
“Don’t we pay him his rent?”
“We haven’t, for some time now,” Achu reminded her.
“That’s all in the past,” his wife grinned.
“Why get into unnecessary problems?”
She bristled. “Unnecessary! So if he comes and asks you for his share in your wife, you’ll give that also?” Achu folded his hands at her in a silent gesture of defeat. He didn’t open his mouth after that.
The landowner sent more men, all experts in the art of persuasion. But Achu’s wife wouldn’t budge. She had made her arrangements. When the men came, with grim smiles, rolled-up sleeves and stout sticks, they were confronted by a puny man with curly hair, wearing a khadi kurta. They stopped short, and returned meekly to their boss, shaking their heads and grumbling, “How were we to know she’ll send for him!”
The puny man was the Leftist leader of the village, and he said nothing but these words: “It’s the tiller’s land. Let no bourgeois landlord think otherwise.” The men shrank away.
After the men had left, the puny leader addressed the woman gravely, “Don’t forget the Party after you get what you want.” And he left, promising to drop in now and then.
Achu’s son Thankappan, a gambler and drunkard, heard about the find the next day. He had drunk himself silly the previous night, and slept where he fell, just outside the liquor shop. He opened his eyes late in the afternoon, and crawled back into the shop to cure his hangover. There he heard that a penniless farmer named Achu had come into hidden treasure.
“Achu?” barked Thankappan. “What did you say? Achu?” He grabbed the man’s collar and said, “Repeat that!” Of course, in his current condition he shouldn’t have done that. There was a terrible fight, and Thankappan found himself battered and bleeding on the road.
He staggered home and took his anger out on his wife. “Ammu!” he called. When she came, he gave her three quick slaps on the face and boxed her on the head and back, and asked, “What’s all this I hear?” He saw his father sitting morosely in a corner and said, “This is not the face of a rich man!”
When he saw the coins, his eyes lit up. The metal could have transformed into alcohol in no time at all, but Thankappan had to contend with his mother. If there was anyone Thankappan respected it was his mother. She had a strong tongue, and a stronger determination. “You touch even one of these coins,” she warned, “and I won’t even consider you’re my son--” She left this dire threat hanging in the air.
Several people filed in that day. They sat on the cot outside his hut or stood around. Some of them introduced themselves as Achu’s relatives, and others as his old friends. They were all interested in knowing what Achu and his wife planned to do with the coins. Perhaps do a little something for the house? Put away a little bit in the bank? Or he could start a small shop, or something like that? And still there’d be something left, wouldn’t there? There were also interested in knowing whether he’d found out the value of the coins.
“Very old they are, so you can’t think in terms of currency,” said one wise old man who sat on the cot and spat out betel juice every few minutes.
“But gold is gold,” said another.
“Better do something before the Government gets to know.”
“Why, what can the Government do?”
“They may confiscate.”
“Oh? It’s not that easy!”
“They may ask for tax.”
“They may ask for party contributions.”
“Be careful, that landlord of yours may not stay quiet for long.”
“Yes, yes, he’ll come back with lawyers. Then what will you do?”
Achu’s wife said, “Let them come. I’ll show them.” They all looked admiringly at her.
“If you had a daughter, you could have married her off,” one woman said.
“We had one, and we lost her,” said Achu’s wife. “If only she’d survived.” She asked her son Thankappan to go and get some tea for all of them from the nearby shop. There’d be no problem with credit from now on.
Their luck had turned and life was looking up, and all five coins were still in place.
The provision store had finally opened its doors to them. Achu’s wife bought two weeks’ supply, and she promised the store-keeper they’d continue to patronise his store. The petty trader, who bought clothes from the town and sold them at a small profit to the villagers, came and spread out his wares in front of their hut. Achu’s wife bought two saris for herself and two for her daughter-in-law. They couldn’t wear them immediately, but kept touching and feeling and admiring the softness and strength of the cloth. Achu got a smart-looking red-and-yellow T-shirt which he wore sheepishly, and then kept grinning and grinning.
Thankappan was the most lavish. He bought two pairs of pants, a lungi of riotous colours and three shirts. He then went out and bought talcum powder and Cinthol soap, and warned his wife not to touch them.
That night they had a heavy meal of rice and shrimp and pappadam. Achu burped and burped. Thankappan polished off a bottle of toddy and stopped with that. He lit two incense sticks in their section of the hut, and turned to his wife for the remaining part of the celebrations. Achu and his wife lay on their mats and listened to the grunts and moans behind the partition, and the wife thought: “Things have started falling into place.”
Achu thought: “I hope they all know what they’re doing.”
Achu’s wife thought: “Now what we need is a pair of tiny feet to run around our house!”
Achu thought: “I hope she’s keeping a count of all the things we’re buying. What if we spend more than we can pay?”
Achu’s wife was already dreaming.
By the third day, the value of the coins had increased several times.
The college-going son of the local MLA heard about the find and came down to the village to visit Achu. He was himself a collector of coins. He had, over the years, managed to put together a small cache of coins from various times and places. He examined Achu’s find and whistled in admiration.
“This is great!” he said. They waited with bated breaths. “This, I would say, is about two hundred years old. Look at the writing, I think it’s in Tamil.”
“What is it worth?” asked Achu’s wife cautiously.
“Will you let me have them?” the boy asked. “I’m a collector.”
“Let’s see. This is not to be squandered about!”
Achu said, “We can give it to him.”
“No, no, no! Can’t you see, the poor boy can’t afford it.”
The boy bent his head, accepting the fact. He had inherited none of the inventiveness of his father, the MLA, in getting what he wanted.
“About ten thousand?” asked Thankappan hopefully.
The boy whistled again. “Much more, I’d say. Much, much more!”
The word spread. Now the village recognised the status of Achu-farmer. He was now a man of means. There was no saying how much he was worth. Probably lakhs. Someone in the tea-shop, with a newspaper spread out in front of him, commented: “These days these things can be priceless. I’ve heard of paintings from our state being sold abroad for lakhs and lakhs.”
“So what would you say Achu’s coins are worth?”
“Same thing.”
“Lakhs and lakhs?”
“You have to send it abroad, first.”
“Where abroad?”
“You know-- Gulf, I suppose.”
“And America and England--”
“How will poor Achu manage that?”
They came to be known as Achu’s Coins. The village acquired a fame all its own. Neighbouring farmers started digging out their crops, using shovels and crowbars. They prayed fervently to their favourite gods as they dug deeper and deeper, but they were disappointed. The earth had stopped sprouting coins.
The MLA heard about the coins from his son and sent for Achu. Achu would have gone, but his wife said, “Who’s he to send for you?”
“But he’s our MLA, I have to obey him.”
“You’re not going!”
“He’ll arrest me.”
“You think so? Just wait and watch the fun.”
So Achu didn’t go and, sure enough, the MLA came to visit them one day in a big red Maruti. He wore a broad smile, a spotlessly white shirt and spotlessly white dhothi, and said he’d rather not sit down in the cot, and remained standing. He used all his political tact and all his political threats, but Achu’s wife said, “Please, these are not for sale yet,” and there was nothing he could do about it.
Well, almost nothing.
He sent word to a party boss in the capital that there was something worth looking into in one of the villages in his constituency. The party boss sent a revenue officer to Achu’s hut. Achu welcomed him with awe and respect. The revenue officer said the coins belonged to the State, and he’d have to hand them over. Achu would have done so, but his wife remained adamant.
“We can come here with the police, you know,” the officer reminded her.
Achu’s wife nodded grimly. “Yes, that’s what you’ll have to do,” she said, “if that’s what you have to do.”
The media came to hear about this. Two newspapers sent their reporters and Achu’s wife explained in detail how her husband had chanced upon the coins. She also hinted subtly that there were dark forces at work who were bent upon depriving them of their rights. The landlord and the MLA read the report, and decided to lie low for a while.
Someone from a Malayalam TV channel read the reports and sent a camera team to interview Achu. They came with a small van fitted with a generator, and spent hours placing lights and a camera in front of the hut, and soon the ground was filled with cables and wires, like criss-crossing black snakes of various sizes. A crowd of villagers gathered to see the fun, it was like a film shooting. A glamourously attired young girl came up with a small mike pinned to her breast. Achu blushed. As he stammered and grunted and searched for words, his wife took over.
“It’s God’s grace,” she told the reporter.
“They’re historical, aren’t they?”
“They must be, they’re worth a lot.”
“What do you think they’re worth?”
“Oh, we haven’t come to a final agreement on that as yet.”
“Your life-style will change, won’t it?”
“It’s already changed, by God’s grace.”
“You haven’t started spending them, I hope?”
“The bank was kind enough to offer us a loan, so why should we?” said Achu’s wife. “They’ve taken two coins as security.” The camera dwelt lovingly on the three remaining coins, the bright light making them glitter like the eyes of a greedy man.
At this point, Thankappan came out from the hut. He was dressed in his new red silk shirt, sleeves rolled up almost to his armpits, and his new colourful lungi, and he had tied his green silk handkerchief gaily around his neck. He had plastered his face with talcum powder, and smelt strongly of Cinthol. The reporter looked at him in surprise. Achu’s wife said proudly, “This is my son.”
The reporter said, “You must be very happy about this.”
Thankappan looked straight at the camera and said, “Yes, I am.”
“You’re employed somewhere?”
Thankappan paused very little before saying, “Yes, I am.”
She looked inquiringly at him. “Where?”
“Money,” he blurted out. “You know, giving and taking?”
“Oh, a financial institution?”
“That’s it,” Thankappan told the camera. “Private one.”“What have you planned for the future?”
“I’m going to join films.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said, and had the camera zoom in on him. Someone in the crowd hooted and several people laughed. Thankappan ran his fingers through his hair like his favourite Tamil hero, and wondered how many people would watch this on TV.
The programme, when it was telecast, made such an impact on the little village that Achu became a hero. The village suddenly had someone to look up to. The Leftist leader came and parked himself on the cot in front of the famous hut. He had appropriated Achu as his new mission in life. “I’m your spokesman from now, don’t you worry,” he told him.
The village rallied around. Achu was their sole representative in the wide, unseen world out there. People dropped in to say hello. He was given free tea at the tea-shop. Thankappan managed a free bottle or two of toddy. He could eye the village beauties with more confidence now. Achu’s wife kept making plans throughout the day. Ammu had borne it much better when her husband came home drunk and slapped her. When she heard that he was spending time with disreputable women, she prayed: please let him not come to me with some horrible disease.
Meanwhile, the Kerala History and Monuments Protection Society (casually called KEHMPROS) arranged a seminar in the capital to discuss the find. It was attended by historians, professors, archeologists and scholars. They agreed that Achu’s Coins were unique and they would have to spend some time studying them to assess their antiquity. The trouble was they had no access to the coins. A woman, some common villager who had possession of the coins, was refusing to part with them, even after being assured that it was only for research and they’d be returned once the research was completed.
The next news report ran: “KEHMPROS defeated by Achu’s wife!”
One day, a priest from the local church walked in and hesitantly peered inside the hut. He was shocked to see a framed picture of Goddess Kali, her tongue hanging out and her eyes glaring back at him. When Achu’s wife came out and wanted to know what he was doing there, he said in surprise, “You’re not Christians?” She shook her head. “I thought you were. You’ve been truly blessed!”
“That we are,” smiled the woman.
“I’m from the church here. I will pray for you.”
“Yes, we need everyone’s prayers,” said Achu’s wife.
“You must visit us one day. We don’t have much of a building now. But we plan to renovate it and make it worthy of God.”
The very next day, a swami came, ochre robes and a bright smile. “Good, good, good!” he said. They folded their hands before him. “But remember, this is only a test. Everything depends on how you pass the test.”
“I don’t understand,” said Achu’s wife frankly.
“You will. Drops of gold can evaporate in the sun. Only faith will survive.”
“Our faith has brought us this,” the woman said.
“Come to my ashram and see. It’s only two kilometers down the road. You will see our poor-feeding scheme in action.”
“God is kind,” said Achu, when he had left.
“So are his messengers,” said his wife.
Achu became a catchword jointly owned by the people of the village. When a bus passed their land, the conductor generally said, “Look, those are Achu’s fields, and that’s his hut. As seen on TV.”
The hero-worship was so intense that when the revenue officer returned with policemen, they were surrounded by several unemployed youngsters of the village, and asked to leave. “Leave our Achu-mama in peace,” they chorused. They had quickly organised themselves into a group called the All Kerala Toilers’ Protection Society, and they spent their day walking through the village in procession, raising slogans and banners.
“He’s our man, you can’t touch him,” they shouted. They pushed and taunted, and then they chanted: “Police, police, have you no shame? Touch him once, touch him twice and you’ll be playing a fire-game!” The entire episode was covered by the media, and Achu’s pedestal rose even higher. He sat nervously inside his hut, refusing to come out and meet anyone, so his wife handled all the publicity herself.
The MLA and the revenue official returned with a posse of policemen.
When the young men, led by the Leftist leader, obstructed them, one excited policeman swung his lathi deftly and caught the Leftist leader on the forehead. He sustained a swelling the size of a duck’s egg, and had to be taken to hospital. This agitated the All Kerala Toilers’ Protection Society, and the resultant din was so huge, it was heard all the way to the capital.
The Leftist leader caressed the duck’s egg and said weakly from his hospital bed: “I’ll continue to be more Leftist than my party.” The reverberations of this statement reached the capital and left several legislators trembling.
The TV reporter, who had appropriated Achu as her own cause, reported rather emotionally on the incident. “Is the State an enemy of the people?” she asked.
This created some more ripples in political circles, and irate questions were asked in the Assembly. The Opposition joined issue with the Government and gave them an ultimatum: Leave that poor farmer alone, or get out!
And compensate our wounded soldier, added the Leftist leader’s supporters, bringing the duck’s egg into even more prominence. Public pressure was such that the Government was forced to announce an award of four thousand rupees to the “almost-martyred soldier” (which was how the TV reporter put it). They also agreed that the matter of Achu’s Coins would rest for the moment.
But the MLA felt that the arrogant farmer and his wife were getting away too easily. He backed a professional litigant who filed a public interest suit against Achu. The coins belonged to the State, there was no doubt about it. What Achu had done clearly constituted a crime. He had, in effect, stolen valuable antique State property. By being nice to the clerical staff in the court, the MLA ensured that the case was taken up without further loss of time.
Months after the discovery of the coins, the court ruled that they clearly belonged to the State, and that Achu had no right to hold on to them. Because of his role in appropriating the coins and refusing to hand them over to the Government, and because he had instigated the villagers to thwart the efforts of the police in doing their duty, he was liable for prosecution. The judge awarded Achu six months of simple imprisonment.
There was no one to appeal against the verdict.
The entire village turned up to watch their erstwhile hero, this thin baffled old fellow, being escorted to a police van by two hefty policemen. The constables smiled in grim anticipation, having been part of the team that had been insulted by the unemployed youngsters some months ago.
Achu’s wife lay back in the cot, weeping loudly. Her daughter-in-law consoled her. Achu’s son Thankappan stood leaning against the hut. Wearing his red silk shirt and multi-coloured lungi, he watched his father being taken away.
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